


The Last Rain

by draculard



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Armitage Hux Lives, Armitage Hux Needs A Hug, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Or rather a hopeful ending, Post-TRoS, Sharing a Bed, Snark, Spy!hux
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-06
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:46:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28396374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/draculard/pseuds/draculard
Summary: “It’s supposed to be soothing,” he says.One of Hux’s eyebrows lifts fractionally higher than the other.“Calming? Relaxing? Soporific?” Poe asks, sounding him out. “Are any of these words ringing a bell for you?”“I’m intimately familiar with rain, thank you,” says Hux, his voice crisp, his face hard. “I simply disagree with your analysis of it.”“Let me guess, you think it’s miserable and cold?” Poe guesses. “Hey, off-topic — you ever wonder if maybe you have an attitude problem?”
Relationships: Poe Dameron/Armitage Hux
Comments: 27
Kudos: 68
Collections: Hoelidays Gift Exchange 2021





	The Last Rain

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cat2000](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cat2000/gifts).



“It keeps me awake,” Hux snaps, his voice accusatory, as if the rainstorm outside his shelter is all Poe’s fault. There are dark circles beneath his eyes — darker than usual, but probably not noticeable to anyone but Poe.

“I’ll talk to the clouds for you, see what I can do,” says Poe dryly. “We’re good buddies, me and the clouds. Comes from being a pilot. _They_ like the sky, _I_ like the sky—”

Hux turns to him, face drawn, and Poe falls silent.

“It’s just rain,” he says finally, averting his eyes. “You’ll get used to it.”

Hux turns away from him again, so all Poe can see is the artificial light playing off his hair, softer and somewhat longer than it used to be when he still wore a uniform. Hux’s civilian clothes hang off him awkwardly — all the clothes they have in stock for people his height are meant for much larger frames. Hux avoids food and water like it’ll kill him; he lives off caf and stims, and even now — late in the night, hours after everyone else has gone to bed — he sits up straight, his narrow back stiff with tension, his fingers moving in a restless pattern over the window sill. 

Poe joins him, careful not to get too close. He peers out the window at the rain.

“It’s supposed to be soothing,” he says.

One of Hux’s eyebrows lifts fractionally higher than the other.

“Calming? Relaxing? Soporific?” Poe asks, sounding him out. “Are any of these words ringing a bell for you?”

“I’m _intimately_ familiar with rain, thank you,” says Hux, his voice crisp, his face hard. “I simply disagree with your analysis of it.”

“Let me guess, you think it’s miserable and cold?” Poe guesses. “Hey, off-topic — you ever wonder if maybe you have an attitude problem?”

Hux doesn’t dignify that with a response. He walks away from the window, turns his back on Poe, assembles himself on the narrow cot he’s been provided with. A quiet buzz of energy hangs around him — anger at not being taken seriously, Poe thinks. Or anger at not being understood. Maybe some of that rage is reserved for Hux himself, for his inability to put certain things into words, to say what he really means.

“You want me to stay the night?” Poe asks. 

Something flickers in Hux’s face; he crosses his arms tightly over his own abdomen, a spot where Poe knows he’s still healing from what could have been a killing blow at the hands of General Pryde. 

“Keeping an eye on me?” Hux asks. Then, almost mockingly, he adds Poe’s title: “ _General_?”

It doesn’t sting the way it would have a year ago, right after the Holdo Maneuver. Instead, all Poe feels is a dull ache, and it’s not entirely for himself. He sees the pinched expression on Hux’s face, the way he refuses to meet Poe’s eyes and crosses his arms even tighter. Hux, for the first time since childhood, has no military title of his own — and now, with the war over and the First Order finished, he has no purpose, either. There’s no spying to be done, no information he can feed them. He doesn’t have anything left. 

Just this shelter. And Poe.

And the rain. 

“Scoot over,” Poe says, taking a seat on Hux’s bed. He gets a dirty glare in return, and Hux moves away from him like a scandalized tooka-cat confronted with humanity for the first time. 

“Is this really necessary?” Hux complains. Poe makes himself comfortable, kicking off his boots first, then lying down with his hands laced together behind his head. He puts his feet in Hux’s lap, fully expecting the other man to push him away in disgust.

Hux doesn’t. He tenses, almost flinches. He goes still. Gently, tentatively — without affection or comfort, like a scientist touching some strange and goopy specimen in a lab — he rests a hand against Poe’s ankle.

“I’m not going to run away in _this_ ,” Hux says, his face angling once again toward the window.

“I know,” Poe says.

“I have no interest in wilderness survival,” Hux continues. “Or pneumonia, for that matter.”

“Well, I’ll scratch that off our list of activities for the night,” Poe says. 

The look Hux gives him at that is almost tortured. For half a second, Poe thinks it’s feigned, that Hux has finally gained a sense of humor and learned how to play along. A moment later, with a surge of something almost like guilt, he realizes he’s wrong.

“Why are you doing this?” Hux asks, searching Poe’s face for answers. Very deliberately, Poe keeps his expression casual and shrugs his shoulders, giving a little scoff.

“Would _you_ want to walk home in all that mess?” he asks, nodding toward the window.

As excuses go, it’s not the best. He can feel Hux studying him even after he closes his eyes, knows the other man isn’t convinced. Now the question is up to Hux: does he care enough to ask? Can he handle an honest answer when he knows Poe doesn’t want to give one?

“You’re sleeping?” Hux asks.

Poe cracks open an eye. “I’m trying,” he says. When Hux doesn’t respond right away, he makes a big deal out of checking his chrono. “Well gee, it’s only four a.m.,” he says. “What am I thinking, going to bed this early in the night? You wanna play cards? I got a sabacc deck in my left pocket—”

Hux turns the lights off with a little remote he’s rigged up in his spare time — fancy tech for a colony like this, where anyone who doesn’t understand electronics is stuck making do with candles — and stretches out against the wall, not touching Poe. Although, bastard that he is, he makes sure to get a good kick in while he’s getting into position. 

In the darkness, Poe can sense Hux’s tension but can’t feel his body heat or even hear him breathing. It’s like sharing a bed with an echo of a person — a ghost. He's seen how Hux freezes when other people get close to him; the flicker of mixed fear and rage that always passes over his face when he's touched, as if he can't quite convince himself that something worse isn't coming. 

“You good?” he asks, for his benefit more than Hux’s.

He gets an irritated sigh as an answer. 

“Not fond of sleepovers?” Poe guesses. 

“This bed is scarcely wide enough for one,” says Hux. “If you _must_ insist on occupying my space, kindly keep your mouth shut as you do.”

Poe huffs out a little laugh, knows that his amusement irritates Hux even more. After a minute or so, something shifts between them, and he knows the silence isn’t going to be broken again. Gradually, he feels Hux relax next to him — as much as Hux can be said to relax — and when Poe looks over, he sees the brittle weariness hanging over Hux’s skin, wonders if he _likes_ this — likes pushing people away, likes sleeping alone.

Hux wanted to know why Poe decided to stay? Maybe because he’s read up on Hux’s file, knows that he grew up on Arkanis, where it never stopped raining — where, if meteorological records are correct, it had been raining the day Hux left. The last day he saw his mother. The day he joined the First Order with no more agency or choice than the child soldiers like Finn had had. Or maybe it’s because of something else — because the rain is cold and miserable; because Hux thinks he deserves to be alone with it; because Poe had seen Hux the last time it rained, had caught him standing out there in the downpour, soaked to the bone, eyes glazed, so cold that he wasn’t even shivering. They don’t talk about that day — how Poe had carried him inside and undressed him, how he’d scrubbed warmth back into his skin beneath the shower spray, how he’d held him until he came back to himself and pushed Poe away with a snarl. 

It had been raining on Hosnian Prime, Poe knows, the day Starkiller Base destroyed it forever. He rolls over in bed, sees Hux staring at the ceiling, eyes hooded and shadowed, cheeks gaunt. He doesn’t notice Poe staring at him; he seems a thousand klicks away. 

“Hey,” Poe whispers, and when he twines his fingers with Hux — his skin warm, Hux’s cold — he sees Hux’s eyes shift a little, watches him blink and come back to himself. Not entirely; just enough to turn his head and meet Poe’s eyes. 

He watches Hux’s chest stutter, the deep up-and-down movement interrupted by a quiet, shaky breath. He feels Hux’s fingers tighten reflexively around his. 

He listens to the rhythmic thud of raindrops on the roof of the shelter and decides this is the last rain Hux will ever have to weather alone. 


End file.
